Archive for December 2014 (11 posts)

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The following is a guest post by Samantha DeWitt, National Digital Stewardship Resident at Tufts University.

Hello readers and a happy winter solstice from Medford, Massachusetts. It’s hard to believe I am already in my third month of the National Digital Stewardship Residency. There’s a chill in the air and the vivid fall colors that decorated the Tufts University campus have given way to a palette of browns and grays.

At the beginning of a project, researchers can receive assistance with storage from the Tufts technology services department. Networked (cluster) storage is available for up to several terabytes. One drive is available for smaller amounts of collaborative storage and a second can be used for individual storage space (up to four GB). Lastly, cloud storage is available through Tufts Box. Of course, one can always elect to store data on a personal hard drive or select from an array of portable storage devices.

Unfortunately, hard drives may crash and portable devices may become lost or obsolete… As this is a blog about digital preservation, I realize I don’t need to elaborate on the problems that can befall neglected media. Further, the data remaining in networked storage will be erased when a researcher leaves. Even if this were not the case, attempts to retroactively find or make sense of the data would be prohibitively time-consuming.

Data must be properly managed to be accessible

Tufts is looking at ways to understand its data output with strategies to trace and catalog research data.

Data sharing can be seen as fundamental to the most basic tenets of the scientific method: it permits reproducibility, encourages collaboration among researchers and advocates for the re-use of valuable resources. These principles have been espoused by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) and they, along with provisions to increase financial transparency, have resulted in increasingly stringent data management mandates for grant-seekers.

These days, Washington isn’t the only player putting pressure on researchers to tend to their data. In 2011, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began asking researchers to submit a data access plan (PDF) along with their grant proposal, stating that, “a data access plan should at a minimum address the nature and scope of data and information to be disseminated, the timing of disclosure, the manner in which the data and information is stored and disseminated, and who will have access to the data and under what conditions.” The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, too, asks applicants to describe how their data and code will be “shared, annotated, cited, and archived.”

But just because data has been placed in an appropriate subject-based repository does not ensure that those at Tufts know where it is. (Researchers themselves may not even know or remember.) This creates a unique opportunity for the university to consider ways to catalog this data. By better understanding its research output, Tufts could more easily:

Comply with funders’ data access mandates.

Visualize institutional research output.

Encourage inter-departmental collaboration.

Avoid research duplication.

Increase institutional visibility by data sharing.

The journals “Science” and “Nature” both require authors to submit data relevant to their publication. Furthermore, in May of this year, the Nature Publishing Group launched an open-access, online-only journal called “Scientific Data,” where researchers can access descriptions of data outputs, file formats, sample identifiers and replication structure. What is worth noting is that the site does not store data but rather acts as a finding aid for data housed in other repositories. The idea of keeping records of data while depositing them elsewhere, is intriguing. In fact, it might be possible to devise a similar sort of system here. Tufts already has a Fedora-based digital repository, so the digital object record would merely require the adequate metadata and a URL to direct the user to the right repository. This type of system could allow the university a better grasp on its research data output.

Tufts has made definite progress in advocating for best practices in data management for its researchers; the library holds frequent workshops and offers assistance in drafting data management plans. It is likely, however, that both government and non-government funders – as well as scholarly journals – will continue to focus on the effective management of research data. Moreover, because universities such as Tufts should be able to appraise one of its most fundamental assets, research data access continues to require our attention.

We’re fans of lists here at the Library of Congress and there is no better way to close out the year on The Signal than taking a look back at our popular blog posts of the year. Our most viewed post of the year, and our second most viewed post of all time since our […]

The following is a guest post by Kalev H. Leetaru of Georgetown University (Former), Robert Miller of Internet Archive and David A. Shamma from Yahoo Labs/Flickr. In 1994, linguist Geoff Nunberg stated, in an article in the journal “Representations,” “reading what people have had to say about the future of knowledge in an electronic world, […]

The news is often called the “first draft of history” and preserved newspapers are some of the most used collections in libraries. The Internet and other digital technologies have altered the news landscape. There have been numerous stories about the demise of the newspaper and disruption at traditional media outlets. We’ve seen more than a […]

The Library of Congress, Office of Strategic Initiatives and the Institute of Museum and Library Services are pleased to announce the official open call for applications for the 2015 National Digital Stewardship Residency, to be held in the Washington, DC area. The application period is from December 17, 2014 through January 30, 2015. To apply, […]

As large institutions and organizations continue to implement preservation processes for their digital collections, a smattering of self-motivated information professionals are trying to reach out to the rest of the world’s digital preservation stakeholders — individuals and small organizations — to help them manage their digital collections. Part of that challenge is just making people aware that: […]

The following is a guest post by Meghan Banach Bergin, Bibliographic Access and Metadata Coordinator, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. On October 30th, the second New England Regional National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NE NDSA) meeting was held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. The meeting was generously sponsored by the Five Colleges Digital Preservation […]

The following is a guest post by Shira Peltzman, National Digital Stewardship Resident at Carnegie Hall in New York City. As the National Digital Stewardship Resident placed at Carnegie Hall, I have been tasked with creating and implementing policies, procedures and best practices for the preservation of our born-digital assets. Carnegie Hall produces a staggering […]

The Personal Digital Archiving Conference 2015 will take place in New York City for the first time. The conference will be hosted by our NDIIPP and NDSA partners at New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program April 24-26, 2015. Presentation submissions for Personal Digital Archiving are due Monday, December 8th, 2014 by 11:59 […]

As part of a larger effort to explore file formats, the Born Digital Video subgroup of the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Audio-Visual Working Group is pleased to announce the release of a new four-part report, “Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video.” This report has already undergone review by FADGI members and invited colleagues including […]

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